Under the Cherry Trees
by celinae
Summary: AU The legend of Bluebeard is a fabled one, with many variations. It always begins, though, with a man. Naruku. And it ends with a girl called Kagome. [discontinued]
1. Prelude: The Harmony of Dissonance

**Disclaimer**: Inuyasha and all related characters belong to Rumiko Takahashi. (I suppose the Grimm Brothers have a copyright on Bluebeard too…) I only own rights to the way the plot differs from Bluebeard and Inuyasha.

**Summary**: AU The legend of Bluebeard is a fabled one, with many variations. It always begins, though, with a man. Naruku. And half a century and three women later, it ends with a girl. _Rated R for mature situations, some inappropriate language, and some violence._

**A**/**N**: The next chapter is on temporary hiatus until I finish Insanity. Also, the story takes places in medieval (if you could call it that) Japan, and is told in Kagome's point of view.

**Corner Point**  
_by celinae_

**Prelude: The Harmony of Dissonance**

They called him Bluebeard.

I don't really know why. He did have a beard, and yet I, who hardly knew him through village gossips, also knew it was fake.

Some say it was made from the pelt of an albino baboon.

Naruku-dono was known to be rich and extravagant: it wasn't a surprise that he would cover his face with expensive cloths and disguises. He was always hiding, but he didn't hide from me. A curse I could not, could never get away from.

Even now I wonder…

His beard was the purest white, and it matched his skin perfectly.


	2. How These Days Grow Old

**Disclaimer**: No, no, and no, I don't own Inuyasha.

**A/N:** Decided to split up this chapter, so it's really short, but the next one will make up for it, promise! Sorry the updates are taking so long; it's so weird to be writing in first person. XD Chiguu-chan (my beta) is the best!

**Under the Cherry Trees**  
_By celinae_

**Chapter One: How These Days Grow Old**

I remember my first wedding was during spring, so that when I left home the cherry trees were flowering, dropping petals onto my hair as the sedan chair moved past, its many curtains obscuring the light. The bumpy ride to the temple took forever, while I watched the trees flow behind me like showers of pink blossoms.

The blue sky was so clear, so endless, even through the gauze that obscured it.

It would have been faster to just walk, but Naraku-dono had insisted on the purity of his bride, and Mother had interpreted that as complete cleanliness.

Mother had been absolutely pig-headed about it, too. I had always admired this quality in her: this was what had helped her survive after Father died and helped her be strong enough to support our family. But still, it was absolutely annoying though when she used it on me.

Mother had been just another daimyo's distant cousin, before Father, a rich noble of the powerful Higurashi clan, married her. Suddenly, she was filthy rich, even more than her distant daimyo cousin, and every court season she was in high demand at every party as the Wife of a Rich Man.

She had a boy, my brother Souta, and me, before Father died of food poisoning. When Father was still alive, I had been ignored and my only classical education was what I had learned by eavesdropping on my brother's calligraphy classes and stumbling through the kanji on the scrolls in Father's study.

I had always loved the cherry trees when I was young, but when I learned that I had to eventually become the Wife of a Rich Man, they always reminded me of my bleak future, taunting me with their whispers of happy memories.

Sometimes, I had hoped that I would marry one of my many cousins, many of whom were rich enough to appease my ambitious mother. They were relatives on my father's side, for he had two younger sisters who had married daimyo princes.

Inuyasha was my favorite cousin, although he was only the youngest son of a powerful official. I met him on a sunny day just like this one, long ago.

Such a distant memory to recall…

**A/N**: Next chapter, Kagome meets Kouga, Inuyasha, and Sesshoumaru!


	3. Blueblack

**Guess what? **I don't own a single nut. XD XD XD

_Nut_, referring to the nutty people in Inuyasha. Who, _of course_, taste like pecans and almonds.

**A/N**: Wagh. XD This fic has **died** on me, and was only resurrected by an idea that struck me on the subway. And I'm pretty sure that it's not going to live eternally in heaven. XD

**Luxfer**: Joke not appreciated. XP

**Under the Cherry Trees**  
_By celinae_

**Chapter 3: Blueblack**

Kanna doesn't remember her childhood, so there are no deathbed flashbacks as she dies, impaled by Naraku-_dono_'s miasma.

Only the glint of a mirror.

It was round, and had a ridged, worn edge of pure silver. The glass was perfectly smooth, created by the finest craftsmen in Tokyo, her sister told her, but Kanna liked to think that it was made by magic.

The mirror itself was magic, she remembered.

She had known the magic of the mirror ever since she was born, so it wasn't magic to her, anymore. Just common sense, something that she felt so deeply that it was a part of her.

Maybe it was her soul, except the mirror took souls away, sucked them in and reflected them in blasts of almost invisible light.

She hated looking in other mirrors, although her sister, Kagura, was obsessed with it: if not to patiently apply her eyeliner or fix her hair, then to admire herself. Naraku-_dono_ also liked them, even if he gazed less than Kagura.

_She remembers how sometimes she held up her mirror while he curled his hair, his blueblack eyes glancing up occasionally, his sardonic smile_.

But now his eyes are bloody, and she can feel her life slipping away as he embraces her. She didn't mind, because she didn't have much to live for.

_Naraku-dono__ will have his Shikon, and I will have… my mirror._

Her forehead furrows briefly as she notices the glint of a mirror, _her_ mirror. Just beyond Naraku-_dono_'s head it hangs, and she reaches out for it.

She can see herself, for the first time, a bloody white figure framed by slimeblack, writhing arms, and even though no one is holding it, she can feel her soul returning.

Or maybe falling out of her: a pain sharper than the hands clutching her still-beating heart, a crack on the perfect plane of glass, shattering…

Kanna looks up into Naraku's eyes, her lips shaping the word she has wished to say for so long, its syllables sweet and pure as they leave her dead mouth.

_Nothing._

**A/N**: How many adjectives can you merge with black? Millionblack. XD


	4. Because He Hates Deja Vu

_celinae is aware that she only has three pennies and two dimes in her wallet, and, also, that she has no claim whatsoever to Inuyasha & Co._

_However, that does not mean that she won't **pretend** she owns them (and that she is back-breaking-rich, as well)._

_(After all, she is quite insane, and quite definitely sleep-deprived.)_

**A/N:** Hopefully, these little ramblings will make more sense to you soon. XD

**BrownShoeLaces**: XD The reason why I said "nothing" (and I'm going to change it to "empty" now, because it does sound more like something she would say), is because Kanna feels like she's nothing, that all her life she has been empty (a void, if you will).

**Under the Cherry Trees**  
_By celinae_

**Chapter 4: Because He Hates Déjà Vu

* * *

**

…_And they do not know, even though_

_it is their fate: to follow their duty blindly._

_And it is his fate: to have loved them.

* * *

_

Sesshoumaru watched the geisha gracefully grind his morning tea. His eyes noticed the brocade details on her fine silk kimono, but he wasn't paying much attention.

He was remembering yesterday. Or was it seven years ago?

The two of them were the same, weren't they?

_Same dark eyes, same pale hands that reached out (so weakly) to touch him, same once-bright laughter._

_That broken smile._

He tried to keep it at arms distance, tried to keep it impersonal by thinking of how Rin's family had benefited from the union, and how Naraku now had a hold on the Higurashi wealth.

But, at the same time, he kept thinking of her, of _their_ black-ringed eyes, still visible underneath their thick, pasty white makeup and painted red blushes.

And Naraku was the same, that sly smile and pride oozing from every thread of his deep navy gi. The defiant lift of his chin, the way his waxy black hair spilled down in coaxed waves, over his ramrod-straight back.

Sesshoumaru would have curled his lip in distaste, but at that moment the geisha gave him the cup, and he promptly lifted it up to his mouth.

The steam rose up under his nostrils, and he sucked it in with a single breath, pausing—

_So beautiful in the moonlight, cherry blossoms falling down around her like fluttery snow, her eyes looking up at him in despair—_

"_Rin…"_

_She was so far out of reach, her yukata shimmering in the wind, she was glowing so much in the darkness that he could barely see her, and he wanted so badly—_

"_Kagome…"_

_Empty eyes and that wan smile twisting her lips, casting shadows over her face. Her cold hands were touching his cheek, gliding down, ghostlike, to his chin and then breaking away in the air, leaving trails of heat._

_And she was smiling bitterly, again._

"_The cherry blossoms are so beautiful in the moonlight, aren't they?"_

—Before letting the rim touch his lips, and tilting the cup so that scalding tea flooded his mouth.

**A/N**: Short, but that's what you have to expect of me, I suppose. XP

(Unbeta-d, because I thought it was short enough to have no mistakes... XD Hope you don't mind, chiguu-chan...)


	5. Yinyang

**Disclamah: **celinae doesn't own the characters. She borrowed them, or rather…  
"insolent-celinae-dono, give me world domination! MUWAHA.."  
"celinae-sama, write a story about my inner bleeding/angst!"  
"celinae-wench-sama, make me snog Kagome."  
"celinae-bitch-sama, don't take Kikyou awaaay froom meee!"

_Kukuku. _

**Under the Cherry Trees**  
_By celinae_

**Chapter 5: Yin-yang**

She was the dark, unruly, passionate sister. The everything, the opposite of her counterpart.

Kanna; the void, the mirror. Together they made the yin-yang balance, but the void collapsed and now she was left overflowing into life.

_Spilling her dreams, her innocence, her future, her blood._

None of it mattered, really.

Naraku was Kanna's husband, but Kanna being dead didn't stop him from being a man. And Kagura hadn't ever been innocent and naïve, or at least never pretended like Kanna.

Or maybe Kanna hadn't pretended… Kagura couldn't remember those kinds of things well nowadays, and it didn't matter anyway, because Kanna was dead, and even living she had been a pale blur.

Sometimes Kagura had trouble remembering if Kanna had lived at all. But then she thought of Naraku, and that single moment where his face had softened. Just once, when he was looking at her glistening white hair.

That one glance was enough, and for Naraku, it was everything. Even if Kagura had, perhaps, loved him as well, he chose the mirror.

_All the better for his reflection. _

She watched as he desired that wench, that cold-beauty Kikyou. And watched his grin of greedy triumph as he held the half-pure Shikon in his hands, the colors twirling in a myriad of black and white light.

_Yin, yang, balance. _

And she watched his empty face as he finally devoured her, his miasma swallowing her black soul, until there wasn't any line of air to distinguish the two colors, until there was just black and black and _black_.

Her last thought fell through the growing distance of her mind, struggling against the cold and painful slumber of death.

_Everything is wrong, is wrong, is wrong, was wrong… Kanna…_

**A/N**: Next will be Kagome! If I can get the energy to write it… XD


End file.
